Unknown Risks and Potential Dangers of A Constitutional Convention

On a variety of fronts—Medicaid mandates, individual health insurance mandates, national education standards—state governments are vigorously pushing back against an overweening federal establishment. This resistance to federal power includes a number of folks who are promoting a constitutional remedy that has never yet been employed in our nation’s history—a convention for considering constitutional amendments.

As provided for in Article V of the U.S. Constitution, states have the power to call on Congress for a constitutional convention when two-thirds of them agree to do so. We asked Matthew Spalding, Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, for his thoughts on this idea.

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